Hans Alexander Winkler

Hans Alexander Winkler (born February 14, 1900 in Bremerhaven ; † January 20, 1945 near Thorn ) was a German orientalist , religious scholar and ethnologist .

biography

youth

After graduating from high school and a subsequent deployment to the front in World War I , Winkler first studied history, German philology and theology in Göttingen before he later turned increasingly to religious history and oriental studies.

As a student, he was dependent on earning his living in the mining industry and joined the KPD in 1922 , of which he was a member until 1928. In 1923 he married the Armenian writer Hayastan Geworkian, with whom he moved to Tübingen .

academic career

Despite difficult living conditions, Winkler showed great academic talent early on. In 1925 he received his doctorate in Tübingen and, after successfully completing his habilitation, became an assistant at the Oriental Seminary there in 1928. He worked and researched there successfully until the summer of 1933, when his communist past was his undoing. Under pressure from the NS administration he submitted his resignation, all attempts to rehabilitate him were unsuccessful.

Trips and expeditions to Egypt

After the abrupt end of his academic career in Tübingen, Winkler increasingly turned to ethnological field research in Egypt . With the help of the Emergency Community of German Science , he first traveled to Upper Egypt in 1932 and then in 1933/34, which yielded rich religious and ethnological results.

As one of the first, Winkler began to be interested in the rich rock art in Upper Egypt . Sir Robert Mond , the director of the Egypt Exploration Society , recognized the scientific importance of Winkler's work for Egyptian prehistory and funded two research expeditions to the desert regions of Upper Egypt. The first took Winkler to the mountains of the Egyptian eastern desert in the winter of 1936/37 and led to the discovery of a large number of prehistoric rock art sites. Despite the early death of his wife in May 1937, Winkler continued his work in the Egyptian western desert that same year. After initially researching the oases of Charga and Dachla , with the help of Ralph Bagnold he came to the Uweinat Mountains in the far south-west of Egypt, where further rock art was discovered and documented.

Despite the successes, the death of Robert Mond in autumn 1938 led to an abrupt end of Winkler's scientific work, as he now lacked the financial means.

In the Foreign Office

Winkler's qualifications and his entry into the NSDAP in 1939 made the once outcast now a welcome employee in the Foreign Office . In 1939 he became a cultural attaché in Tehran , but had to leave the country when Iran was occupied by British and Soviet troops in 1941. He has now been canceled from the German Africa Corps , where he was charged with collecting and evaluating information relevant to the war. In June 1942 he was seriously wounded and, after his recovery, worked in the internal service of the Foreign Office, where he maintained contacts with allied Arab politicians. In May 1944 Winkler received the news that his son Haiko had deserted and was threatened with the death penalty. Winkler therefore asked to end his service at the Foreign Office and switch to the Wehrmacht . In September 1944 Winkler was drafted into active military service on the Eastern Front, where he died on January 20, 1945 south of Thorn in the Wartheland . Due to the rapidly advancing Russian front, his body could no longer be recovered from the battlefield. It is unclear where he found his final resting place.

Scientific works and merits

Despite his short life, which was marked by the turmoil of world politics, Winkler did great research. This applies above all to his main work, Egyptian Folklore, and his research into rock art, which is of lasting value to this day. In the rock art of the Egyptian oases, one of the leitmotifs is named after Winkler today: the so-called "Winkler Figures", depictions of people with a strongly emphasized abdomen.

Works (selection)

• Seals and characters in Muslim sorcery , Berlin 1930.
• Farmers between water and desert. Folklore from the village of Kimân in Upper Egypt . Stuttgart 1934.
• Egyptian folklore . W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1936.
• The riding spirits of the dead. A study of the obsession of 'Abd er-Râdi and of ghosts and demons, saints and ecstatic people, the cult of the dead and the priesthood in an Upper Egyptian village. W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1936.
• Peoples and peoples movements in prehistoric Upper Egypt in the light of new rock art finds . Stuttgart 1937.
• Rock Drawings of southern Upper Egypt I . Sir Robert Mond Desert Expedition Season 1936-1937 Preliminary Report, London 1938.
• Rock-Drawings of southern Upper Egypt II . Sir Robert Mond Desert Expedition Season 1937-1938 Preliminary Report, London 1939.

literature

• Horst Junginger : A chapter of religious studies during the Nazi era: Hans Alexander Winkler 1900–1945. In: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 3, 1993, pp. 137–161
• Horst Junginger: The tragic life of Hans Alexander Winkler (1900–1945) and his Armenian wife Hayastan (1901–1937). In: Building blocks for the history of Tübingen university. 7, 1995.
• Jeffrey Herf : Nazi propaganda in the Arab world. Yale University Press, New Haven 2009, ISBN 978-0-300-14579-3 . (Winkler: passim , see index. (English))
• Johannes Hürter (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871 - 1945. 5. T - Z, supplements. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 5: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 , p. 297 f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Alexander Winkler in the catalog of the German National Library
• University archive Tübingen zu Winkler
• Expeditions to the Libyan Desert